SEO For Bands and Musicians: Using Google To Promote and Book More Shows

Whether you are one of the most popular bands or musicians in the US, playing sold out arenas, or a local band or musician trying to make a name for themselves, the challenges that bands have with promotion using SEO, social media (Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, Tumblr, etc), and content strategy is consistent. Below you will find what we have come up against when doing promotion for bands and musicians.

Challenges of SEO for Band Website

One challenge with SEO for band websites is usually a bands information is already scattered around the web thus making any basic information about the band, that will be put on the bands website, not valuable for SEO. What poses even more of a challenge is if the band is well known they probably have a Wikipedia page created by the fans with everything you could ever want to know about the band. So one of the primary challenges with doing SEO for band websites is generating information and content that is unique to the band, in presented in a way that their fan base appreciates and will interact with.

I would suggest coming up with some creating tactics for generating valuable content by utilizing assets at your disposal such as band members or fans.

Another challenge with SEO for band websites is that most bands will have to settle for offshoots of their name for their URL or web address (unless they have a very unique name and are new on the scene). This is usually due to either fans buying the name and generating a fan website, or because the bands name is generic like “Beatles” or “Cars”.

I would suggest keeping the URL short but descriptive like we did for the Badfinger Website. We wanted to use a name that we could use in normal speech so we setting on BadfingerSite.com. This way we could just say go to BadfingerSite.com and phychologically it’s easier to remember since its part of a normal speech pattern to say “Badfinger Site”.

The Basic Content That All Band’s or Musician’s Websites Should Have

Websites that are designed and SEO’ed for bands should contain a few primary features that visitors are searching for. These include: tour dates, information about the band members, personal interaction points, and a way to contact the band to build that connection – this is one thing that bands try to accomplish while on stage by going into the audience or bringing someone up on stage).

About Badfinger and Joey Molland

Joey Molland cut his musical teeth in the early 1960s with Liverpool bands such as The Assassins and The Profiles. In 1965, he joined The Masterminds. It was at a Masterminds gig at The Blue Angel club in Liverpool when The Rolling Stones and their manager/producer Andrew Loog Oldham showed up. Oldham was impressed with the band; most notably their cover of Bob Dylan songs and the rest is history.

Besides touring and recording with Badfinger, Joey and the band would perform on George Harrison’s (of the Beatles) All Things Must Pass album and the Concert For Bangladesh, performing on John Lennon’s Imagine album with Tommy Evans, and many other well known acts over the years.

SEO Features For The Website of Joey Molland

Social Benefits:

Having a social presence can help SEO by affecting the part of the Google’s algorithm that is responsible for user metrics.

The search engines have also admitted to using other social signals to help them rank websites.

A percentage of your social community has blogs or websites so interacting with them can give your band’s website a better chance of being linked to from your communities websites.

For the Badfinger website we created a Facebook profile to help their ever growing fan base find and begin the interaction process with Joey.

They utilize their Facebook page to post images, recent Q&A that was submitted through the Ask Joey feature, videos, and extend the reach of their other online marketing efforts and their website (badfingersite.com).

It’s important to note that most bands only utilize Facebook, or in the past, Myspace to market their band. This gave them some basic features and a built-in community, but bands didn’t have the ability to do more advanced tactics that would drive people to venues, increase reach and exposure in the search engines, and earn money outside of their shows.

Having a website for your band, even if its simple, can add extended value to your built-in Facebook communities.

Ask Joey: As mentioned above, generating new, unique and valuable content outside what is on other sites or on Wikipedia is a major challenge for bands when it comes to SEO. “Ask Joey” is a unique feature that we built into the website to accomplish a few primary goals. It’s a simple concept that has some great benefits; users submit their questions to Joey and he answers them with insider information that he has from being part of the music industry (being part of Badfinger and playing with many different well known artists) over the years and people he has met.

It gives the site unique content that can’t be found elsewhere on the web for Google to ingest and rank for long tail keywords.

This feature gave the site valuable, insider information directly from Joey. It speaks directly to questions that were asked by fans, thus forming a bond between Joey and the fans.

It also made the site a living entity that extended it well beyond just a flat brochure website, as most band websites are.

Tour Dates Module: This was a feature we added to the website to keep the fans up-to-date about upcoming shows and events that Joey Molland will be playing at or attending.

Blog Feature: We wanted to keep the website growing and always presenting new information and news about Joey and Badfinger. We added a blog feature for Joey to add his personal articles and commentary about shows or keep the fans up to date on the general state of the band.

Blogger Outreach: This was a simple (yet time consuming) marketing initiative we undertook to get the word out about the new Joey Molland and Badfinger website.

We identified related blogs that were owned by fans or sites that had articles about Badfinger.

We then reached out to these sites letting them know there was an official website they could link to for Joey Molland and Badfinger. In our outreach email outlined some of the unique features of BadfingerSite.com.

The goal of these outreach programs was to to try and generate some buzz about the new Badfinger website and build relevant links to help with rankings and Google exposure.

Diversify Content Sets: We were able to add original lyrics to some of the Badfinger songs, insider information about the history of Badfinger, and original album covers.

Social Responsibility: Bands or people in the spotlight of society have a social responsibility to get involved in helping society as a whole. We have built in an area for Joey to interact and market related causes that he feels are worthy causes that help society as a whole.

Tips For SEO and Promoting Your Band

Create unique and valuable content from insider information from the band.

Add traditional interaction points such as tour dates, album information, and song lyrics.

Don’t just rely on Facebook or Myspace to market and build your fan base, because a website coupled with social media can have an exponential affect.

Create a blog, and write often to keep the fans informed and build the connection with them.

Reach out to the fans that have blogs for links to help with rankings and exposure

Don’t forget to get involved in worthy causes to give back.

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What People Are Saying…

In a world where customer service is dead, Bill and his team restored my faith in what it means to love what you do and to really understand your customer. Alison Victoria, TV Host Kitchen Crashers

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